McMaster University became the proud owner of a rare $750,000 genome sequencer, a machine of which less than 40 currently exists, which is probably the next best thing to an actual time machine since the genome sequencer can do in hours what normally takes scientists years to accomplish - to create an exact picture of prehistoric organisms and environments that existed long before cellphones with video cams were invented.

The sequencer reads the DNA from various kinds of samples such as ice, hair, or poop. Unlike other machines which is governed by the Garbage-in/Gabage-out rule (like this PC I'm using), the genome sequence can take in a fossilized poop/hair sample and spit out  astounding bits of info in turn. For example, the poop could reveal the genetic portrait of the creature that left it, the animals and plants it had eaten, the bacteria that broke down food in its gut and even the viruses that made it sick.

Such genomic portraits could help scientists answer some of mankind's questions such as:

• When did we leave Africa?
• Did we have sex with Neanderthals?
• Did Raquel Welch-like amazons duked it out with dinosaurs One Million Years BC?